Facing down Medusa

THE genetic roots of a rare disease that transfixes its victims as surely as the gaze of the mythical Medusa may soon be uncovered. As well as raising hopes for treating the condition, which gradually transforms muscle into bone, the discovery could revolutionise reconstructive plastic surgery and the repair of serious fractures.

Fred Kaplan and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have now traced the inherited condition, known as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva or FOP, to small regions of chromosomes 2 and 4. Finding genetic markers for the disease is difficult because there are hardly any families with several generations of sufferers. "People are so incapacitated, they don't have families," explains Kaplan. This makes it hard to tease out genetic differences between healthy and affected relatives.

Kaplan and his colleagues began to make progress after discovering four multigenerational families with the disease. Their progress could be even faster ...

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